My name is Cliff and I'm a newbie at the whole CNC thing. Over the past few months (more like 7 months) I've purchased a Syil X4 Plus from Syil Canada (Cost a little more with taxes and transport but well worth the customer service), SolidWorks and Visual Mill. After messing around with all of these new toys I was amazed at the things I could design and build on this machine.
Only one problem though: The machine losing its position once in a while and destroying my work. After much messing around and lots of research I decided this was happening primarily during machine repositions (rapids) and due mainly to lack of torque and associated stepper resonance. (Steppers can resonate at both low speed and high speed if they become stalled for any reason. Therefore I reasoned that higher torque motors would be part of the solution)
Being the compulsive and obsessive goat that I am, I ended up completely re-gutting my machine.
Here is a list and some pics of what I did:
1. Installed hinges and latches on the aft electronics cabinet to ease entry and maintenance on this much accessed part of the mill.
2. Soft mounted the electronics cabinet to the mill to help protect the electronics from some of the mill vibration.
3. Replaced all 4 stepper drives with Gecko G203V drivers. These are very good drivers allowing up to 7 amps per phase (more torque) and Gecko's proprietary "mid phase resonance dampening". Relatively small investment but seemingly large reassurance. These drives can also be trimmed to each specific motor to insure the smoothest running motor state possible. (This doesn't seem to be just hype; the trimming makes a noticeable difference in the motors operation). Also these are small drives that get hot. The instructions call for mounting them on a heat sink so I elected to mount all 4 of them to a 1"x3"x12" aluminum plate. See Pics.
4. Replaced all stepper motors on X, Y, Z, and A axis's with Nema 34 series motors with rear shaft for installation of encoders. The Nema 34 motors I chose (after experimenting with many) were the 34K108D-LW8 high torque motors from Anaheim Automation. These motors have some kind of high tech magnet technology in them that practically doubles the torque. (And quadruples the price, by the way)
I thought this may be just B.S. marketing emphasized with some fancy red paint but rest assured they make a huge difference. Reference the following: I've always had trouble with the a axis (rotary table) on this machine. After installing a 34Y series motor (rated at 467 oz/in of torque) I noticed very little difference in the amount of force it took to stall the rotary table operation compared to the originally installed Nema 23 motor (easily stalled with one hand regardless of speed). So then I pulled one of my $510.00 34K series motors (rated at 820 oz/in of torque) from the box, installed it on the rotary table to see if the extra $400 makes any difference. Well, it does! I absolutely could not stall the rotary table. Not with one hand, not with both. It would just simply twist my whole body around until it stopped where I told it to. Dead nuts on. These "K" series motors are the same size as any other 400 oz/in motors but man do they have some torque. Needless to say, I'm putting these motors on all four axes of my machine. (They only had two in stock when I moded my machine so until they come in I only have them installed on my Z and A Axis's.)
5. Replaced the two 350 watt power supplies with two Meanwell SE-600-48 600 watt power supplies. This was done to handle the additional amps of the Gecko's and the 34K motors. (I'm running 5 amps/phase parallel per motor. With two motors per power supply that should keep me well under the 12 amp rating of the power supply. Also these power supplies are slightly larger than the originals but with some modification they will fit in the original cabinet location. See Pics)
6. Replaced all machine power supply (110v) wiring all the way to the plug in the wall with larger more suitable wiring. (not to mention eliminating some of the suspect wire crimping standards seemingly set by someone in China)
7. Installed 4 US Digital E6 series encoders on all 4 axis's including their prefabricated shielded wiring.
8. Installed Sound Logic's Encoder Interface board and required parallel port plug.
9. Routed all motor and switch wiring (except Z axis) through 5/8" poly reinforced tubing (yellow air hose). These hoses were mounted at both ends with brass fittings and pinch clamps which makes for a strong rigid mount and easy removal while maintaining exceptional protection for the all-important motor and encoder wiring. This mod eliminated the cheap plastic wire looms and fittings that if you tried to clean would just fall out in your hand. I also clamped and routed the hoses properly to give the table the most uninhibited movement possible.
10. Because of the length of the 34K series motors and encoders on the X and Y axis I had to lengthen the motor covers approximately 1/4 inch which I did with straps of aluminum and flush rivets. Also, because of the added rigidity of the wire routing hoses and the associated forces put on these covers I drilled and tapped the Nema 34 motor mounts on the top to accept additional screws through the covers. This makes the covers more rigid to better accommodate the increased moment from the wire routing hoses.
11. Routed the 4th axis (rotary table) wiring into the X axis motor cover and terminated both the motor wires and encoder wires with appropriate size Molex plugs. This allows easy removal of the 4th axis, then you can just tuck the plugs up under the X axis cover to protect them from metal debris.
12. Replaced the gibb screws on both X and Y axis's with hardened cap screws and nuts. I also filled the gap in the Y axis gibb with a layer of silicone to keep metal chips from packing into the gibb. I don't know why they left this gibb un-protected but by its design with the table at one or the other limit it leaves the exposed end of the gibb plate slightly loose. When metal chips pack into this gap then you lose the consistency of your gibb settings.
13. Installed two 48Volt fans. One in upper vented access plate of the cabinet and one just under the motor in the spindle head.
14. Installed FogBuster coolant system with interfaced electric valve.
After moding the entire machine, I turned it on and started fiddling with the encoders until they started working in Mach 3. Now this is cool. It is very hard to stall any axis on this machine now but if you do the whole machine shuts down with the "reset" button blinking. When you press the reset once, it re-aligns the bad axis with the encoder reading, then if you're happy with its position readings, hit reset again and you're off and running without ruining your part. This is VERY cool and I now have a huge amount of confidence with this machine!
Only one thing thought after all of that: I haven't made a single part on it since the mod. So as good as it sounds, it still needs to be tried. I will advise though